The best pitmasters teach someone younger. Recipes stay alive by being handed over, not by being guarded.
STILLNESS
WHAT THIS MEANS
Guarding a method protects your standing and shortens the method’s life. A technique kept secret ends with whoever held it, while one taught imperfectly to four people survives in some form for another fifty years. People who are genuinely good at something tend to work that out and start giving it away.
Teach the thing you do best to one person who wants it, even if you are only two years ahead of them. Expect them to do it differently from you. Handing something on and keeping control of it are not compatible, and only one of the two lasts.
A QUESTION TO SIT WITH
What are you guarding that would survive better shared?
MORE IN TIME, MORTALITY & LEGACY
- Getting older means some doors close. It also means you finally know which doors you actually wanted.
- How many years you get is out of your hands. What the next twelve months are for is mostly in them.
- Someone in your family was the first to finish school, or move, or start over. You’re living in the space they cleared.
Free, with nothing to buy inside it.